Guns and Violent Deaths

Guns and Violent Deaths

Stephen Augustine sent us some very interesting information from Lorraine Devon Wilke’s article (20 Jan 2013) about gun deaths. In the past 43 years (1968-2011) there have been 1,384,171 gun deaths in the United States. This is 18% higher than all the war deaths in U. S. history, which stands at 1,171,177.

He also wrote: “Jesus’ saying, ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword’ comes to mind. That is, a culture which broadly accepts the use of violence as an acceptable solution are bound to see it enacted upon them and within them. It’s pretty clear, to me at least, that Jesus lived and preached radical alternatives to the violence of his time and asked his followers to choose likewise. The glorification of war and sophisticated weapons in movies, video games, and enormous military budgets has an almost religious fervour to it. I’m not surprised, then, that the violence inflicted on almost 60 billion land animals, globally, every year is accepted as normal.”

Both the war and gun deaths are horrible statistics, but they are dwarfed by the more than 20,000,000,000 (yes, that’s 20 billion) land and sea animals that are killed every single year in the United States to satisfy the human lust for flesh, which echoes Stephen’s thoughts, but keeps the statistics confined to the U. S.

This means that 54,794,520 animals suffer and die to satisfy our country’s lust for flesh every single day, which is 20 times greater than the number of people who died in war in the history of the U. S., and gun deaths for the past 43 years.

The tragedy of all of this suffering is that the people who demand “their pound of flesh” don’t care that the animals are suffering and dying for them.

They are totally indifferent.

Their hearts have been seared and hardened to the point that they no longer have any empathy for any of these so-called “food animals”.

6 Responses to Guns and Violent Deaths

I recieved an e-mail from the Obama campaign telling his plans to end gun violence in America while preserving “the right to bear arms” where his citizen advisory group included gun clubs but no animal rights or environmental group. Not even the Humane Society.

I cannot say I was pleased.

First, such a view incorrectly understands the second ammendment, which is not the “right to bear arms” but the “right to assemble militatias.” This is why when Democrats take these “centrist stands” like you do not need an oozie to hunt a deer, they do not get many takers from NRA and company, for the “real reason” why the gun nuts want these weapons is not to hunt dear, but to protect themselves from a tyranical government through having an armed civilion. The sollution is then to show the public that there are other venues for protecting yourself against tryanny than stockpiling weapons like questioning authority, going to demonstrations, petitioning leaders, testifying at town meetings and so forth.

Second, there is a positive correlation between hunting, gun violence and the bullying and violent socialization of children and youth.

Third, such a stradegy is fundimentally anthropocentric and specesist for it sends a very powerful message that human life is more valuable than animal life.

Thanks so much for addressing this issue from an animal rights perspective.

I too am sick and tired of pitting human rights against animal rights.

When in reality, there is a positive correlation between human rights abuse and animal rights abuse where oppressed minorities such as myself–“I am on the autism spectrum”—are often the “canary in the coal mine” that a certian instutitionally cruel practice like sports hunting or animal experimentation is not working, while the plight of animals is a parady of different types of human-human oppressions like objectification, the mechanistic mindset, hierarchy, dualism, stereotyping, domination, centrism, normacy, abelism, bigotry, culturecide even genecide.

Yes, isn’t it so that one reason animals are suffering and dying because of most humans’ attitudes (just as Jesus did), is this questiion of stereotyping/speciesism, i.e the label put upon them that they are ‘inferior’; less important than humans.

As a child and young person, I tended to be rather nervy; and the word ‘neurotic’ was in vogue in those days! ….And I concluded that if a label is put upon a person who is to any extent ‘different’, they have to be, or appear to be, twice as “normal” as others (consider themselves to be!!), in order to counteract the label! And so with the precious animals – .I guess we are having to convince “ordinary”, “normal” people that God’s creatures are doubly worthy of respect, caring and compassion and justice….in order to pass on a glimpse of the concept of mercy….